Avenger Assembled

Erin, have an HP.

By the time Thunderstanding looked Jack's way again, he'd moved to her other side with speed, quiet, and dexterity. With a smile, he offered her his arm, a gentleman escorting a lady around the floor. Hey, if she's interested, she's interested. "Come with me, and I'll introduce you to all sorts of interesting people." Whether or not she took his arm or not, Jack began walking Thunderstanding along the floor, heading first for the host of the party himself. I don't actually know this guy. But what the heck, let's see what I can get away with. "Thunderstanding? I'd like you to meet the host of this fabulous party, Mr. Ace Danger," said a smiling man who Ace had never seen before in his life. "Ace, this is Thunderstanding. She's a lady who knows how to drink." Jack waved his mint julep for emphasis, the liquid inside looking nearly drained.

As she crouched in the alley and the simulated corpse beneath her feet faded away, Erin realized that she wasn't alone in the alleyway. There was a man above her, crouching low and stealthily on the rooftop far above her, watching her closely. The two of them froze for a moment, locking distant eyes, before Erin saw her new antagonist reach for something heavy and metallic-looking at his belt.

Blackbird does less well: 26

"Good, young Michael. Very good. Now we can begin our final trial. The trial...by combat!" Magni raised his mighty fists and shouted: "Computer! Give us the battlefield of Stamford Bridge!" At his words, the two young heroes were suddenly surrounded by a grim barbaric battlefield, a place where men in leather and metal armor roared defiance and hacked at each other with spears and swords. Mike stood before a rapidly rushing river, one that looked too deep and fast for a normal man to swim across, battle raging on both sides of him. For his part, Magni was standing on the only visible bridge in the middle of the battlefield, two glowing hammers in both hands, his back straight and true. "THOU WOULDST CROSS THIS BRIDGE!?" he shouted. "FIRST THOU MUST KNOCK ASIDE THE CHAMPION OF THE NORTH!" Behind Mike, his "supporters" began cheering his name, calling for him to go forth and do battle in the name of freedom and right.

Make a Notice check. Your DC is 24.

"Good." Seven snapped to her feet suddenly, her eyes glowing, the walls of the simulated room around them shifting into reds and blacks, the sky overhead turning into clouds rushing by as if from hurricane-force winds, for all that the room itself remained eerily quiet. "Because this is a test of combat!" She raised her hand and spoke an arcane syllable, mystic fire suddenly pulsating in her palm. "Defend yourself, child!"

Roll for initiative! Seven will later tell herself that she's going easy on the kid: 5

Merry blinked, taken aback, but briefly recovered. "Oh! I know!" She pointed to a huge crimson divan in the middle of the room, a massive, overstuffed piece of furniture that looked like a lady's fainting couch from a previous generation. "Put them here. But spread them around, so we can still use the couch. That's where we'll put the cake. It's more festive that way!" She folded her hands in front of her, grinning cheerfully. "It'll be beautiful!"

And Ecal? That's an HP for you, too.

The bartender obediently poured Chris a tall, cold Carlsberg, foam piled just high enough on the huge mug to lure the young man in like a moth to a flame. Daisy giggled and put her hand over her mouth at his naughty cleverness, and was just about to order a drink of her own when Geckoman felt something big and heavy clamp down on his shoulder. It turned out to be a hand, followed quickly by an amazingly deep voice. "Well well well, Mr. McKenzie." Chris recognized the voice of his ethics teacher very well, the gigantic Leeroy Hawke looming over him with a cheerful smile on his broad face. The former Turbo-Boost was an oddly outsized man, even for someone so strong; a common thing given how much supervillans of the 90s had hit the MAX. "I trust you and Ms. Gibbons are representing our school to the best of your abilities?" He released the smaller teenager, but stayed close by.

You know what? Pompadour, you are the first character to successfully react to Avenger (Or pretend to react to Avenger) the way I've been presenting the PC. Have an HP.

Someone doesn't want to be on the Next-Gen anytime soon. Yes, yes you can.

He's the Raven, Ace. He's just that good.

Wander's antagonist was still alive, though heavily battered and broken. His breathing was coming shallowly and his neck was hanging at a strange angle, simulated blood on his face and on her hands. What lay next was her choice, no one else's. There was no sign that Mr. Archer, or anyone else, was going to interrupt her. As promised, the fight was hers to take all the way to the end. The simulated street was quiet and peaceful now that she'd punched the man into a back alley; there was only the usual background hum of the city.

Seven smiled, looking very pleased with her student's choice. "Very good, Alex. You have chosen to look for new opportunities rather than accept the alternatives given you. Even if your efforts fail and you must fall back on the negative options given you, you have made the right choices for a hero." She "stood up." "There is only one more phase left to our test. It may be the most challenging, but it is not the hardest. Are you ready?"

"Very good!" called Magni as the simulation faded. "Your mind proved swifter than his body, as should always be the case with a true warrior. You have passed your test well." If Magni was put off by Alex's defiant response to the test, it was hard to tell; in fact, he seemed remarkably pleased with how things were going. "We have but one more test before the grand event. Tell me, Michael, your answer to this. You have beaten your enemy and have him at your mercy. He is a monster, a terrible threat to all of humanity, who may well escape from confinement and kill all he can. His life is between your hands." He held up his own big mitts. "What do you do?

Though it was hard to notice anything other than the unspeakably gorgeous Student Body, Geckoman also noticed her boyfriend at the other end of the hall. Clarence Beaudrie, aka Battlecry, had obviously noticed Geckoman come in, and noticed him with his girlfriend as well. From the look in the older, bigger student's eye, Geckoman was going to have a situation on his hands at some point in the near future. Clarence met Geckoman's eyes and mouthed something that looked like a remark about Geckoman's mother.

Shaen, have a PP.

"Certainly," replied Odysseus, "Follow me, and I'll take you right where you need to go." He turned and began cutting a new path through the sky, heading back towards the huge tower where the two dimension-traveling heroes had landed. "I just wish you could have stayed longer. We have so many things to show you here; so much we can learn from each other. It would be a shame to have it come to an end too quickly."

Merry looked a bit disappointed, but took the instructions anyway. "Okay, that should work." Standing on her high shoes, she gave Stesha a searching look. "Thanks so much for doing this. I really appreciate you making this night so special. Is there anything else I can do to help?" She pointed out the particular spots where she wanted the flowers, confirming the places where the vases and such did need to be tacked down. "Just be really careful, I don't want to do anything to mess up the party." She took deep breaths of the flowers as they came by, looking deeply pleased with herself. "This is going to be beautiful."

"I would be delighted," said Daisy, putting an affectionate arm around Geckoman's shoulders as the two heroes walked over to the bar. All the men were looking her way, it was hard not to, but Daisy was of course under strict orders not to use the most obvious of her powers out here in public. She was certainly devoting a lot of attention to her new buddy in the fancy clothes, though she was also shooting a few looks in the direction of the small knot of Claremont students at the opposite end of the room. There have only ever been a very small number of people who could sneak up on the Scarab once the full psychic powers of Heru-Ra have been awakened. There is more than one person like that at the party, though this one needed to wait until Scarab was distracted by conversation with other heroes. :bat: "Ace. Scarab." Duncan Summers looked surprisingly young for a man of his age, his eyes still vital and his back still straight despite the cane he leaned on. Somewhere past 55, he looked like he had several decades to go already. With the crowd at the bar getting large, and the host approaching with a large party, at least one of whom would recognize him by sight, Jack took this opportunity to disappear.

I need a Notice check from Geckoman. Phantom, there is definitely some magic running around here in addition to Grimalkin's dimensional chicanery. You'll have to succeed on a pretty good roll to recognize anyone but Grim.

"I guess you never know what someone's really like until you see them in a crisis," said Hope with a small shrug. "Personally, I think some of them are just wastes," she confided quietly. "You know Daisy Gibbons? She wants to use her powers to be a super-model. And Beaudrie acts like a superhero, but he just wants to be patted on the head and take credit for what the less popular kids do. I don't think they'd be any better even if you pushed them. But some of them, I think you're right," she added. "Dauntless and Relentless, they're pretty cool. But they know what it's like to fight for what really matters."

Wander does a tremendous amount of damage. OK, are you doing lethal or non-lethal here?